A species native farther to the west, but appearing on dry, sandy, sunny roadsides, especially along Interstate 75. Perhaps originally planted but now locally well established. First collected in Michigan in Crawford Co., by M. J. Oldham in 2002.

Bouteloua dactyloides is dioecious; the female plants have spikelets enclosed in a ± globular bur-like structure, but not so fiercely spiny as in Cenchrus, and the male have spikelets in 1–4 short, one-sided spikes, disposed like a small example of our other Bouteloua species.

With hairy, short, curled foliage, an individual vegetative tuft is reminiscent of Danthonia. Bouteloua dactyloides differs from our other Bouteloua species in being colonial by stiff stolons. See Columbus (1999) for discussion of its placement.